Xbox has brought its Cloud Gaming service to Meta Quest VR headset devices, as both companies said at the launch of their latest Quest 3 hardware earlier this year. The Xbox Cloud Gaming app has a beta tag and is limited to Quest 2, Quest 3 and Quest Pro headsets (sorry OG Quest owners), but it essentially offers a massive virtual cloud gaming experience as long as you have a compatible controller to work with and a subscription Game Pass Ultimate.
I quickly downloaded the app from the Meta Quest store and gave it a try to see how it works. pretty good, I’m happy to report, with the caveat that even after pairing an Xbox Elite 2 controller and an 8bitdo Pro Gamepad, I had to hard reboot the headset to get their input to register in the Xbox Cloud app itself Gaming. Once I did that, though, everything worked as it should and I was able to jump into a cloud-based GTV V gaming session without incident.
Performance was smooth on my device, but of course your network environment will affect how well it works for you. The app doesn’t make your games immersive, I should note: It presents them on a large virtual 2D screen, which can be set to one of four sizes (I like XL) and presented either in a fully virtual environment with theme on Xbox or in your own space through the passthrough features of Meta Quest 3 or Pro.
In case you’ve somehow missed it, Xbox Cloud Gaming provides a pretty amazing catalog of games that you can view through Xbox Game Pass, and now you can play them anywhere on a really nice, really big virtual screen if you have a compatible headset Quest and controller. It’s a very nice upgrade to an already great service from Microsoft, and a nice extra reason to own a Quest 3 as well.
